When one of China’s biggest property developers wanted to raise $300mn in Hong Kong late last month, JPMorgan Chase seemed to have everything ready. The Wall Street bank had lined up investors for the Country Garden share sale, and published a term sheet with a fixed price.
上月底，当中国最大的房地产开发商之一碧桂园(Country Garden)想在香港融资3亿美元时，摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)似乎做好了一切准备。
It launched the deal on a Monday evening. Shortly afterwards, Country Garden walked away, cancelling the deal in a highly unusual move. The developer, which is based in Guangdong and listed in Hong Kong, had issued a profit warning earlier that day. It has since missed bond coupon payments and suspended trading in some of its bonds.
这家华尔街银行已经为碧桂园的股票发售组织好了投资者，并公布了一份固定价格的投资条款清单(term sheet)。
The deal’s collapse has drawn attention to a bigger problem for US investment banks. Selling shares in Chinese companies offshore used to be such a money-spinner that it made up a huge share of the banks’ Asian revenues and helped subsidise an expensive presence in smaller markets. But they no longer do much of that business at all.
该行在一个周一晚间发起了这项交易。但紧接着碧桂园打起了退堂鼓，很不寻常地取消了交易。这家总部位于广东、在香港上市的开发商当天早些时候发布了盈利预警。此后，该公司未能支付债券票息，并将部分债券停牌。
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citi combined made just $131mn in net revenue from advising Chinese companies on raising equity overseas last year, figures from Dealogic show. That is an 87 per cent drop from the previous year. This year is not looking much better: since January they have made just $98mn.
这笔交易的失败，让人们注意到美国投资银行面临的一个更大问题。在境外发售中国公司的股票曾经是非常赚钱的业务，在这些银行的亚洲收入中占据了很大份额，并有助于补贴它们在较小市场的代价高昂的业务。但它们现在基本上不太做这项生意了。